A good day today....
I thought pulling the slightly larger 1/0 cable thru the conduit might be fiddly, but a very light touch of Syl-Glide on it made it easy. Took just a few minutes to get the old 1 ga cable out and get the new cable in. I also replaced the 2 ga neg side cables to and from the kill switch. Even though they are each about 16 in long, I replaced with 1/0 cable to ensure a full amp/volt circuit to the battery.
Before I installed it, much easier to add heat sleeve for the starter end while on the bench. You'll notice that I had the cable vendor install a 90d lug at this end.
Tons of room with the PMGR starter. Using the 90d lug allows the cable to tuck right up to the starter. This is without even adding a couple of straps to hold the cable securely.
I installed the starter with no shim, then .020, .040, and. 060 shims to look at pinion gear clearance. I settled on .040 even though I think .020 would be ok. I'd rather it be on the loose side vs too tight.
One thing I found was that - even though the tooth clearance was ok - the starter pinion would not release from the flexplate teeth. I went round and round on this until I did some online research.
Seems that in many cases the larger 11 tooth pinion on gear reduction starters doesn't manually disengage, but will disengage as soon as the engine starts. I tested this and sure enough, if I even nudged the engine over using a socket/bar on the balancer, I could hear the pinion gear immediately click right back. Did this half a dozen times consistently.
Another factor (I think) is that the flexplate is powder coated. The starter pinion teeth scrape into the powder coating and seem to sort of stick in place. The old flexplate didn't have any coating but this one does. So I think that coating needs to be worn off the contact surfaces, and I'm expecting to probably replace the .040 shim with a. 020 shim as the clearance increases.
All in all I'm happy today - the engine cranks over nicely and evenly. No galloping so it tells me the valves are all closing properly. No grinding, rockers tapping on valve covers or weird sounds. Exciting to hear even this first noise out of it after many years of quiet.
Last up is to install the distributor and fire this thing up. Getting a couple extra hands/eyes to do this.